Current issue: Volume 29 Issue 5

As we navigate the complexities of breathing in a world marked by social upheaval and environmental challenges, this issue seeks to illuminate the transformative power of breath in shaping our understanding of the performing arts. By bridging the gap between art, aesthetics and science, the issue promotes interdisciplinary scholarship and encourages new perspectives on the significance of respiration in artistic practices. International authors consider the cultural, historical and social implications of breath, highlighting its significance in different artistic traditions and contemporary movements. Through a diverse array of contributions, they examine the intersections of breath with themes of colonialism, racialization, politics of asphyxiation, necropolitics, resistance and artificial intelligence. The issue attempts to challenge conventional understandings of breath and respiration, fostering innovative dialogues around these concepts in the context of art and performance. 

 

READ THE EDITORIAL AND ABSTRACTS ONLINE

 

1 Editorial

SOZITA GOUDOUNA

 

11 The Invention of Breath: Historicizing a cosmic metaphor through music and theatre

TOM PARKINSON

 

19 Suffocating Magic

MISCHA TWITCHIN

 

27 Bidesiya: Searching and (re)searching an inclusive framework of resistance for breathing

SATKIRTI SINHA

 

35 ‘Holding Breath’: Listening, care and connection across thresholds of experience in the wake of pandemic grief

POPPY DE SOUZA

 

41 Breathing with Ghosts: A decolonial reading of dance

GONCA YALÇIN

 

49 ‘Doesn’t Every Dying Person’s Last Breath Touch the Living?’: Breath performance and the politics of asphyxiation in contemporary Turkish theatre

CHRISTINA BANALOPOULOU

 

56 Hamlet’s ‘Dying’ Breaths and the Ars Memoria and Moriendi

STEPHANIE SHIRILAN

 

62 Drawing Our Breath in Pain to Tell Hamlet’s Story: Dramaturgical perspectives

FREDDIE ROKEM

 

70 ‘Every Relation is a Manipulation of Breath’: Outside-in embodied practice at the Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Art Research in Puducherry, India

KARIN SHANKAR WITH VINAY KUMAR AND NIMMY RAPHEL

 

78 Uneasy Breathing: Disrupting Contact Improvisation’s flow with Fred Holland and Ishmael Houston-Jones

CHRYS PAPAIOANNOU

 

86 Cultivating ‘氣 Qi’ in Connecting the More-Than-Human World: Sensing breath through the practice of ‘ZhanZhuang 站樁’

PENNY YIOU PENG

 

94 Dances of Breath: Martha Graham, vitalism and politics

ALEXANDRA KOLB

 

105 Inhaling the Other: Pneumatic intimacies and the racialization of breath

JULIA SCHADE

 

112 Breathwork in VestAndPage Performance Practice

ANDREA PAGNES AND VERENA STENKE

 

119 Artificial Respiration: An interdisciplinary dialogue on humanizing AI and future trends in performance

RODONIKI ATHANASIADOU AND BRAD KRUMHOLZ

 

128 Somewhere Between Breathing In and Breathing Out: Making immersive audio work about Long COVID

RHIANNON JONES AND MICHAEL PINCHBECK

 

137 Ins(c)ense: Embodied cultural coding in the work of Azza El Siddique and TJ Shin

LAUREL V. MCLAUGHLIN WITH AZZA EL SIDDIQUE AND TJ SHIN

 

146 THORAX, a Therapeutic Interactive Installation

MARION INGLESSI

 

148 The Voice of the Air

JESS RICHARDS

 

150 Black Lung

SAM TRUBRIDGE

 

156 Te Mana Motuhake o te Hā: Sovereignty of breath

CAROL BROWN & TIA REIHANA-MORUNGA

 

160 Dispossessed Breath: Visual and concrete poetry as Black

nonperformance

SADÉ POWELL

 

162 Phrenos – The Bank of Breath

FILOMENA BORECKÁ

 

164 Hooding a Hawk: Searching beyond the citta

HELEN COLLARD WITH DENYS BLACKER

 

166 Breathing as Intra-action. The case of Silent Days, Sleepless Nights

CARMEN PELLEGRINELLI WITH LAURA LUCIA PAROLIN

 

168 Choke (2019)

LENA CHEN AND MICHAEL CHARLES NEUMANN

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REVIEWS

170 Who Remembers the Nation?

JENNIFER JOAN THOMPSON

 

171 An Act of Becoming: Dance, doing dancing, dancing bodies

AMY SHEPPARD

 

173 Propagandist Educators, Germanic Repertoires and their Dramaturgies

AZADEH SHARIFI

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175 Notes on Contributors